


Some People Never Go Crazy

by dragonofdispair, Rizobact



Series: Smoke and Mirrors [4]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, TF Flash Challenge 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-23 10:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8324854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizobact/pseuds/Rizobact
Summary: There's no such thing as long term survival without one's bondmate. If a mech survives the initial shock of a broken bond, then he goes insane before eventually succumbing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Transformers Flash Fic Challenge using the quote “Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead” by Charles Bukowski as a prompt. The featured character is Prowl. 500 words.

Prowl wasn’t crazy. At least, he didn’t think he was crazy. But wasn’t that how it worked? Crazy people didn’t know that they were crazy? But he wasn't sure he wasn't, either. So where did that leave him?

"When're they gonna let you out? You haven't done anything wrong."

 _Going_ crazy, maybe.

"Don't they need a reason to hold you more than twenty-four hours?"

Glancing up at the window, Prowl met Jazz's optic band in the tempered, shatterproof glass of the cell. Jazz never remembered how long he’d been here. He didn’t always remember this wasn’t Prowl’s first day in the asylum.

Prowl didn't say anything. The wardens couldn't call looking out a window a sign of a malfunctioning processor, but they might take issue with him talking to his dead bondmate in the reflection.

"C'mon, it's not my fault you're in here! What'd I do to deserve the silent treatment?"

It was Jazz's fault though. The medics had all said it, over and over: mechs who didn't die immediately from bond-shock eventually destabilized, slipping into madness before ultimately off-lining. There was no such thing as long-term survival for a broken spark-bond.

"Stop pretendin' you can't hear me, Prowler! I know you're listening, and it's startin' to annoy me."

It hadn't annoyed Prowl, seeing and hearing Jazz after that awful day. The day ~~they~~ he had died. But that was what they had locked him up here for. Visual and auditory hallucinations, brought about by trauma.

They weren't real, they'd told him. Jazz wasn't real.

Prowl hadn't known what to think, at first. Talking with the dead was ridiculous, _impossible._ And Jazz was very, very dead. The permanent ache in his spark proved it with every pulse; a wound that would never heal throbbed where Jazz's spark had been torn from his. He hadn't needed the coroner's report, the forensic details… the death certificate. He had known before any of them, beyond any comforting shadow of a doubt, that his bondmate was gone.

Until, suddenly, he wasn't.

He'd tried to keep it a secret initially, after the medics announced their surprise at his survival and the (hopeless) prognosis for his future. He couldn’t really be talking to Jazz; the Jazz that came and went from his life in any reflective surface wasn't actually there. If Prowl just put his processor to it, he could beat the odds and continue to function in spite of his loss.

Jazz would have wanted that, he reminded himself. He'd always told him, if anything ever happened, that Prowl should keep living.

Sometimes Prowl hated him for that. It felt like a punishment, having to live without Jazz. But… he _wasn't_ living without Jazz, was he? Jazz was still here, right here, begging him to talk to him.

Was he crazy? Was Jazz only in his head?

…Did it matter? Did it matter if it was only in his head, if it meant that Jazz was with him?

Maybe being crazy wouldn’t be so bad.


End file.
